The 2025 whitetail season was one of the best TOJ’s Whitetail Editor has had filming exceptional deer.

Story and photography by Bob Zaiglin

As I negotiated my suburban over the snow-white caliche roads towards the southwest portion of the ranch I was on, a contrail of dust erupted in my wake.  Even if a buck was spotted, it was fruitless to stop to get a better look at the animal because I would immediately be engulfed in a cloud of dust, unable to see the animal before it reentered the brush.

It was December 10, my first evening on a large ranch I have worked with over the last 22 years, thus I knew it and its inhabitants well.  Due to the unseasonable heat in the region, I decided to set up near water and hopefully film a few bucks coming in for a drink.

It was downright hot as I got sequestered in what little shade was available to not only break my outline, but avoid the hot sun.  The evening was uneventful until the sun dropped below the taller mesquite trees, and a couple of doe plus a fawn appeared at the brush line.  Once confident all was good, they exited the thorn scrub onto the sendero and began nibbling on kernels of corn distributed by ranch hands an hour earlier.

Moments later they were interrupted by the appearance of a buck in its later years supporting a substantial amount of headgear.  There was a time when I would have harvested such a beautiful buck, but instead I took several shots of the animal with my camera attached to a 400mm lens supported by a titanium tripod.  I took a number of pictures of the animal as it worked its way to an iconic windmill, once ubiquitous across the brush country, but now only few exist, replaced by solar-powered wells.

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